


Why

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Songfic, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2532038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naruto sings to Sasuke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after Sasuke's return to the village.
> 
> The song is "Why" by Rascal Flatts and I suggest you listen to it before or on repeat during the reading of this fic.

Naruto looked down at the ivory keys under his callused fingertips. They were both freshly cleaned. 

Did such bloody fingers, fingers that had seen and caused so much death, deserve to touch such a masterpiece as the piano keys?

He played, swaying lightly to his own tune.

_"It must have been a place so dark, you couldn't feel the light. Reaching 'fore you threw that stormy cloud. Now here we are, gathered, in our little hometown. This can't be the way you meant to draw a crowd. Oh I . . . That's what I keep asking. Was there anything . . . I could have said or done? Oh I . . . Had no clue you were masking a troubled soul. Oh, God only knows what went wrong."_

He smiled and his blue eyes closed gently as his fingers danced across the ivory. HIs blonde hair swayed gently on the breeze with him. 

 _"And why . . . You would leave the stage in the middle of a song._ " 

He hummed deeply,; voice echoing through the vacant space around him.

_"Now in my mind I keep you frozen as a seventeen year old, rounding third to score the winning run. You always played with passion, no matter what the game. When you took the stage you shined just like the sun._

_Oh, I . . . That's what I keep asking. And was there anything . . . I could have said or done? Oh, I . . . had no clue you were masking a troubled soul. Oh, God only knows, what went wrong. And why . . . you would leave the stage in the middle of a song."_

HIs voice rose in power and intensity, his eyes clenched tightly and his body posed in agony. The music rose around him like a wave against a cliffside, jumping all the way up before sliding back down. As it calmed, Naruto unclenched and his eyes opened, the eddy irises darkened into  tumultuous whirlpools. 

_"Now the oak trees are swaying . . . in the early autumn breeze. The golden sun is shining on my face."_

The music was back to the simple piano which Naruto was sitting before. It was gentle once more, but Naruto himself seemed to fall deeper into the abyss surrounding him. 

_"Amid tangled thoughts I hear . . . A mockingbird sing."_

The music rose with his voice. A sad grin came to his face and his eyes were roiling in turmoil.

_"This old world really ain't that bad a place._

_Oh I . . . There's no comprehending."_

He frowned again and shrugged. 

_"But who am I to try to judge or explain? Oh, but I . . . do have one burning question. Who told you life . . . wasn't worth the fight?"_

A determined scowl came across the golden tanned skin and he matched it with blue fire in his eyes. 

_"They were wrong! They lied! Now you're gone! And we cried!"_

Agony crippled him again and tears streamed down his face. 

_"'Cause it's not like you . . . to walk away in the middle of a song._

_Your absolutely . . . beautiful . . . song . . . "_

* * *

Sasuke was frozen. This . . . this . . . 

"He left it for you, Sasuke." Kakashi said quietly. 

"Bu-but I came back, I-I -"

"Not soon enough." Something like malice and resentment tinged Kakashi's voice, but after seeing this . . . Sasuke couldn't and wouldn't blame him.

"I never knew he would do something like this . . . "

"Yeah, well, you  _didn't_ know him." Kakashi shrugged and gently removed the tape. "I'm taking this back to my apartment."

Mutely, Sasuke could only nod.

* * *

A few hours later, Sasuke found himself walking through the graves. Distantly, he could hear Kakashi's wrecked sobs  past his muffling mask and hands. 

He approached the silver-haired man even when he had no right to sit beside him before this particular grave. 

Lyrics to the song that haunted Sasuke were slipping between Kakashi's lips when he gasped for air. 

"Why?" The jounin choked out. "Naruto, why?"

"I don't know." Sasuke answered, his own head bowed in grief. 

"Why, Naruto?!" Their sensei's voice rose as his despair overtook him. "What didn't I do?! Please,  _please_ . . . I'm sorry . . . Don't do this to me . . . "

Sasuke watched in terrified stillness as Kakashi fingered a kunai.

The man stabbed it deeply into the earth beneath it, clutching it like he must have the cold, pale hand. "Why?!"

* * *

Sakura, Yamato and even Sai were silent when Kakashi met them for ramen. Sasuke made a kind of gurgling noise, the only thing to break the silence. 

Kakashi's normal blue hitai-ite had been traded in for one with long black ties and the orange t-shirt underneath his flak jacket were no mistake. A hand came up to intercept and silence Sasuke.

"Two from everyone. That's how it works."

Obito's eye and the Icha Icha series.

Minato's kunai and the sudden appearance of the jounin uniform. 

Naruto's hitai-ite and the colour orange. 

He bowed his head and sat back down, Kakashi sitting beside him. 

* * *

The official coroner's report read suicide, but all of those close to him knew it as so much more. 

Naruto's small Kakashi doll had been buried with him at Kakashi's request. 

Sasuke had returned a week after the funeral to sullen faces and a cheerless village. The vibrancy and colour seemed to have completely drained. 

In the shinobi cemetery, the newest tombstone was the last light in the village. 

_Naruto Uzumaki_

_Son of Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki_

_Age 18_

_Shinobi, Sage, Jinchuuriki, Friend_

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
